


Gender Studies

by kbaycolt



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Jeff Winger, Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Gay Male Character, Gen, Gender Non-conforming Characters, but i didn't want to delve into sexuality as well as gender in this fic, deconstructions of toxic masculinity, no beta we die like men, tiny hints at lesbiannie, trobed parts can/should be read as romantic, troy & jeff paint their nails and talk about gender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbaycolt/pseuds/kbaycolt
Summary: The more time Troy spends with Abed, the more he starts to think that maybe he can try being a guy like Abed is. Abed doesn't judge him for crying at sad movies, or mock the way he looks when he twirls across a stage in tights, or make any comments about the fact that he had kept the colorful pantsuit from their first year in the back of his closet.* * *A study of Troy Barnes and gender.
Relationships: Troy Barnes & Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes & Jeff Winger
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	Gender Studies

**Author's Note:**

> this spawned from delirious midnight thoughts about how jeff, abed, and troy are all deconstructions of toxic masculinity in different ways and then this happened

Jeff paints his nails for the heist.

Troy notices when Annie whips out a bottle of black polish from her purse with a wicked grin, cornering Jeff by their coffee table and forcing him to sit down and spread his hands flat on the wooden surface. Jeff complains, but for some reason it feels performative, and once she's got the first nail painted he stops whining entirely.

It isn't like Troy hasn't seen a guy with painted nails before. It's just that he doesn't usually feel so weird about it.

He gets suited up in the plumber's costume like he's supposed to, but he keeps glancing into the living room and watching Annie paint Jeff nails in perfect, practiced strokes, while Jeff tries his hardest to act unaffected by the proceedings. Troy keeps seeing Jeff look down at his hands, an odd, scrunched up look on his face, before hurriedly looking away again.

It's strange, and makes Troy feel kind of uncomfortable, like he's intruding on some private internal epiphany.

Annie goes all the way with the rest of Jeff's makeup, too. It's less extravagant than Britta's, but with the heavy, dark eyeshadow and wig and all the clattery silver necklaces, he looks... really good. Troy can't help but feel a bit jealous of the way Jeff slips so easily into what is essentially _drag,_ without drowning in shame or self-consciousness or even really protesting all that much. The whole getup is trying way too hard to ever be something Jeff would normally wear, but Troy would be lying if he said Jeff didn't pull it off.

Troy also can't help but notice that it isn't like that, for himself. Whenever he dressed up in women's clothes for a role or that one time they escorted Chang to the dance, it felt just like that. A role. Like he was playing a character; Troy-acting-at-femininity instead of just being Troy-in-a-dress.

But it doesn't feel like that when he sees Jeff in that sheer top and those tight, high-waisted pants. He just looks like Jeff-in-goth-makeup and not an awkward caricature.

And Troy feels _jealous_.

Which is crazy, and more than a little terrifying, so Troy throws himself into the role of the Jersey plumber and hatches a heist with his friends, and doesn't think about it again.

* * *

By the time Troy was four years old, he was already having _real_ masculinity shoved down his throat by every adult in his life.

It was always "man up" this, or "men don't cry" that, over and over and over endlessly until he got to high school, and had Being A Man down to a science. He wore manliness like an ill-fitting costume, too tight and pinching in some places, and too loose in others. He knew that Being A Man was the right thing to be, no matter how much it made his stomach twist with anxiety and his eyes burn with tears under his covers late night after football games, because he knew right down to his core that he was not capable of being anything else.

* * *

Abed is... different.

Abed's a guy, too, but he's nothing like the sort of guy Troy knows he should be. The sort of guy he's desperately tried to emulate since the moment he was old enough to understand what gender was.

It's weird, and Troy doesn't know how he would explain it to anybody if asked, but Abed is a man in the same way that Troy is: he isn't.

Abed is a guy because people call him _he_ and _son_ and _dude_ and he doesn't correct them. He's a guy de facto, Troy thinks. Not so much a tight, restricting coat and more like the tiniest dash of yellow on a canvas of blues and greens. What makes Abed _Abed_ has nothing to do with what's in his pants or his pronouns or his masculinity, and everything to do with everything else.

Troy feels jealous of that, too.

* * *

Being A Man feels like it swallows up his whole personality, sometimes. Troy hates it, but he isn't sure who he is without that surefire knowledge that he can always fall back on.

He likes basketball and football because he's a man, and men like those things. He's embarrassed about dancing because men don't normally do that. He doesn't wear makeup or dresses (casually) because men don't do that. He's ashamed about how much he cries because real men take their pain and bottle it up inside, instead of letting it burst out of them in an avalanche of sniffles and sobs.

He defines himself by what is acceptable for real, proper men. He looks up to men like Jeff, who seem to have themselves figured out, so confident and sure of who they are that don't feel the compulsive need to justify their every action as _perfectly manly, alright?_

Troy doesn't think other guys feel like he does. Like he's suffocating in his own skin and can't claw his way free.

* * *

The more time Troy spends with Abed, the more he starts to think that maybe he can try being a guy like Abed is. Abed doesn't judge him for crying at sad movies, or mock the way he looks when he twirls across a stage in tights, or make any comments about the fact that he had kept the colorful pantsuit from their first year in the back of his closet.

And one day, Troy looks at his best friend and thinks, _Maybe this is another way to be a man._

* * *

Jeff gives Troy and Abed a key to his apartment in their fourth year. Tells them it's for emergencies only. Tells them, _If you come here while I'm not home, I will kill you._

They do it anyway, and don't get caught, because Jeff's apartment looks entirely unlived in, and it's pretty easy to not leave any sort of obvious trail. Troy snoops in Jeff's bedroom while Abed takes a shower, and finds pretty much exactly what he'd expected: dry cleaned dress shirts on hangers, some hoodies and t-shirts towards the back, pairs upon pairs of sleek, shiny leather shoes. What Troy _doesn't_ expect to find is a skirt, shoved all the way in the far corner, like Jeff had been afraid of anyone stumbling across it.

Troy pulls it out, oddly apprehensive. The skirt is short and pleated, a deep, rich maroon in color with a gold belt clasp. It's pretty. Feminine. He just doesn't understand why it's in Jeff's closet.

A girl probably left it a long time ago and never came back to fetch it. That's the reasonable explanation.

But it was on a hanger.

Like Jeff had deliberately hung it up. In his own closet.

Troy's mouth feels strangely dry.

He quickly shoves the skirt back where he found it and doesn't mention it to Abed when they leave. For some reason, he doesn't want this to be something they make fun of Jeff for, even if there ends up being a perfectly normal explanation. They have plenty of other good material, anyway.

* * *

The dean makes Troy uncomfortable, and not for the obvious reasons. All the flirting with Jeff is creepy, of course, but it's not what makes Troy feel all jittery and nervous.

It's Pelton's outfits.

The wigs, the makeup, the extravagant costumes. Troy watches over the course of the years as Pelton's costumes become more and more bold, outlandish, proud. He watches as Pelton seems to grow more confident and sure of himself as he increasingly upgrades his wardrobe and no one says anything negative about it.

Troy had worried for a bit that feeling sick every time the dean waltzed into the study room in a dress meant he was secretly homophobic. He didn't want to be, and cried about it for a while in shame, before coming to the understanding that it wasn't that he was disgusted with the dean; he just wasn't used to seeing men being feminine loudly, without fear, and was a little taken aback out of habit. That was all.

* * *

He had wondered what it was like to love yourself so easily. To be a man who loves skirts and eyeliner and nail polish and still be a _man_.

Later on, he will recognize this, too, as jealousy.

* * *

So, here's the thing:

Troy doesn't like dresses and makeup unless he's doing it as a role.

He only feels safe being feminine when he can spin it into an excuse, a character, a new film Abed's working on.

He's dancing to improve coordination for football. He's in a wig and heels for an homage. He's painstakingly applying lip gloss on a dare.

Dressing up, for only himself, completely unironically? Absolutely not. He tries, once, just to see if it feels any different, but he only succeeds in working himself into an anxiety attack and never tries it again. He decides, after that, that whatever type of man he is, he must not be the type that dean Pelton is.

He keeps looking.

* * *

Being around Abed lets Troy slip out of his daily manly costume for once and just _exist_. It's easy, and fun, and sometimes he can even get the feeling to last through a few class periods before his self-consciousness returns. Abed simply doesn't care about impressing anyone or trying to prove he's enough. He knows he is.

Troy longs for that sort of enduring, base confidence. Abed is the only person he knows who can dodge the pressure of living in a society.

* * *

Troy's opinions of Jeff shift over time.

Originally, he had admired Jeff for his casual attractiveness, his devil-may-care attitude that seemed irresistible to girls, the way he blended in so expertly with what a man was supposed to be. He appeared to be everything Troy wasn't.

But as the years stretched on, Troy watches the universe deconstruct Jeff's leading man archetype, piece by piece. Jeff is insecure. Jeff cares too much about what other people think. Jeff sleeps around but he does it to prove that he still can, not because he likes it. Jeff has skincare routines and preens in bathroom mirrors and doesn't get along very well with other guys. Jeff looks good in eyeshadow and has a woman's skirt in his closet.

Jeff becomes less admirable and more relatable. He presents the most suave, most cool, most false of his many selves to the greater world, which Troy understands deeply, but he gets the sense that they do it for very different reasons.

He thinks that maybe Jeff, a little like the dean, wears manliness like a costume, that gets him what he wants. Like Being A Man is just another constructed persona that Jeff shuffles through depending on what he needs. He thinks that maybe, if Jeff noticed that men in skirts and heels were becoming more likable, more desirable, and pleasing to society at large, he'd make the switch without any identity crises or fanfare. He thinks that maybe Jeff wields masculinity like a tool.

It feels taboo to ask, though.

* * *

Troy, Abed, and Annie come over to Jeff's apartment to hang out. Jeff has cooked a meal, a real meal, which gets Annie to teasingly ask, "Who are you and what have you done with Jeff?" but Troy doesn't think it's that big of a surprise.

They drink scotch (Jeff) and apple juice (everyone else) and watch _The Office_ on Jeff's expensive flat screen TV, all crammed together on his couch. Halfway through season 1, Annie digs around in her purse and extracts a smaller bag filled with nail polish, every color of the rainbow. She splays her fingers across her knee and starts delicately painting her nails with a bright, burning shade of pink. Jeff warns her not to get any of it on his couch. She sticks her tongue out at him, but she's being careful.

She has a couple colors lined up on Jeff's coffee table. Orange, white, and a deep magenta, edging on purple. He can't quite place where he recognizes them.

"Abed," Annie says. He glances up from where he's sitting on the floor, having migrated there once the couch became a little too cramped. "Can I paint your nails?"

"Sure," he says, easy as breathing. He holds out his hand for Annie to take, and Troy's getting that weird sick feeling in his stomach again.

"Any color preferences?"

"No, you can pick."

Annie purses her lips and rummages through her bag. She plucks out a pastel yellow, smiling. "How's this?" she asks, twisting to show Troy and Jeff.

Jeff, cool and calm, nods his approval. Troy awkwardly stammers out, "Yeah, it's great, I love yellow," and wants to slap himself.

"Well, maybe I can do yours next!" Annie chirps.

"Maybe," Troy says, voice pitching.

He needs to be normal about this ASAP. Everyone else in this room is being normal besides him. Annie starts gently painting Abed's nails, bracing his hand with her wrist like she's done it a million times, which she probably has, since she's a girl and girls do this sort of thing. _Some guys do too,_ Troy's brain murmurs poisonously, and he knows that, of course. Just. Not guys like him. Not like this, anyway, when he's not in a character.

When Annie finishes Abed's nails, he goes to the bathroom to run cold water over them, because apparently that helps them dry faster. Her own nails have mostly dried by now, alternating colors from one finger to the next, orange, white, pink. It's killing him, that Troy can't quite place where he remembers the sequence.

"How about you?" Annie asks Jeff, waving the nail polish in the air like Lucifer tempting Eve in the Garden.

Jeff gives her a lopsided smile. "Oh, I'm good."

"You sure?"

"Positive."

"Alright..." Annie puts the nail polish away, looking crestfallen. Troy knows her well enough by now to recognize this as a guilt trip.

Half an hour later, she has to leave, telling them that she needs to be up early the next morning and wants to get to bed. They all bid her goodnight, and then it's just Troy, Abed, and Jeff. Then Abed excuses himself to finish some last-minute editing for his film class, and it's just Troy and Jeff.

It's always a little awkward, when it's only the two of them. Jeff thinks Troy is too childish, Troy thinks Jeff is too harsh, and overall they don't have too much in common.

Still. Troy likes Jeff, and appreciates the odd, sort of emotionally distant uncle-figure he's become to him and Abed. And Jeff hasn't kicked Troy out yet, so. There's that.

"Huh," Jeff says, leaning forward. He picks up one of Annie's nail polish bottles. "Annie must have missed this one."

"Oh," Troy says. "She'll probably want it back."

"Yeah."

Jeff is staring at the blue bottle with faint interest. Then, surprisingly, he slowly unscrews the cap, shuffling his position so he has a better range of motion. Troy thinks he might be open-mouth gaping. Jeff spreads his fingers, balancing his hand on his knee, and starts painting his nails.

"Uh," Troy says, "what are you doing?"

"I don't know."

"Okay. Why?"

"Not sure." Jeff's eyebrows are drawn together in concentration. He paints shaky, messy strokes of navy blue across his nail, worrying his lip between his teeth. Troy watches, strangely enraptured. Jeff's hand slips and he paints a good portion of his finger instead. "Dammit. Annie makes it look so easy."

Troy shifts, swallowing hard. "Do you... do you like it?"

Jeff frowns. "Like what?"

"That. Y'know. Girly stuff." He cringes as soon as the words are out of his mouth.

But Jeff doesn't look upset. He has moved on from his travesty of an index nail and onto his middle finger. "It's just paint. It'll come off in a few days."

"But do you _like_ it?"

"A little. I like seeing the look on Britta's face when I surprise her by doing something unexpected. That's mostly what it's about."

"So... you're painting your nails because you like making people react to you?" Troy doesn't really understand. He can't fit that idea into the framework his reality operates through. "Even if it's in bad ways?"

"Pretty much."

Jeff likes attention, that much has never been a secret. But Troy has always preferred attention that was safe, a given. Something other people thrust upon him, rather than something he actively sought out. He didn't like unasked for reactions; at least, not in the way Jeff seems to.

"That's kinda weird," Troy tells him.

"It's not that weird."

It is, but arguing with Jeff Winger is truly the most fruitless of endeavors. Troy watches Jeff scrape polish from his skin with the edge of his thumbnail.

"Do you ever feel like," Troy says, then stops.

"Like what?"

He chews on the inside of his cheek, fingers tapping on Jeff's couch. His stomach is twisting with anxiety. "Like you're always performing, so you can fit in, but you don't really want to fit in anymore? And, maybe you sorta want to just be a guy who plays make believe and dresses up as girls for movies sometimes and likes dancing and puppies and cries when people step on dandelions and still be a _guy?"_

Jeff does Troy the massive favor of not looking at him as he starts to sniffle, eyes burning with sudden tears. Jeff keeps painting his nails, acting like he doesn't hear Troy choking back sobs across the couch. "Well... I don't feel like that. But if you do, that's fine. I- I mean... there's no wrong way to be a man, Troy." He sighs. "Sorry if I did anything, to make you feel like you had to act a certain way to be a man. Whoever you are is what a real man is."

Troy scrubs at his eyes pitifully. "You mean it?"

"Yeah, Troy. Don't beat yourself up over this. It's not emasculating to..." Jeff grimaces a little. "... cry when people step on dandelions. You can be whatever you want. You just have to know what that is."

That last part sounds suspiciously like he's quoting something, but Troy can't really bring himself to care. It's not the most long-winded, heartfelt, or eloquent Winger speech Troy has heard, but he thinks it's one of Jeff's best anyway. Somewhere, deep down, some tense part of Troy finally loosens as Jeff's words settle in his chest.

He sniffs one last time. Jeff has finished with his first five nails, and now seems to be considering the daunting task of tackling the others with his non-dominant hand.

Troy holds out his palm and gestures. Jeff glances up, surprised.

"Let me do it," he says, and means, _Thank you._

Jeff's lips curve into a slight smile, and Troy hears, _You're welcome._

**Author's Note:**

> idk if i communicated it well enough but my essential thoughts on how troy and jeff approach masculinity are basically that troy unlearns toxic masculinity and grows to accept himself as just another way of being a man, while jeff uses his masculinity as a manipulation tactic to get what he wants and give off certain impressions to other people. i truly do think that the one part of himself that jeff is confident in is his gender expression. he knows who he is and doesn't mind doing things to come off as "more masculine" if he thinks it'll earn him brownie points with other people. he doesn't have much of a practical reason to dress feminine so he doesn't, simple as that. meanwhile troy has to overcome all these toxic ideas about what constitutes a real man and whether or not his true self is even compatible with that.
> 
> ty for reading, leave a comment if you enjoyed <3


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